Whew, it has been a long time since I last made
an official newspost.
The reason I didn't post was NOT that things are
not going well - the reason simply was lack of
time due to too much work...
I had a speed-holiday with my girlfriend (one
day Europapark in Rust), and as I had my
Pandora with me, I could make a newspost while
it was her turn driving the car.

This is the first full newspost I made directly on
the Pandora - the keyboard is really working well
So... let's see how everything is coming along,
shall we?


1. The overall production

Overall, things are running pretty smooth and
well.
Over 600 Pandoras have already been
delivered (about 200 of those to long-time
preorders) and we're currently getting a stable
100 per week units.
This is not yet full production speed. New test
PCBs have been successful produced, so once
the next batch of 1000 PCBs is finished, I'm
planning to speed up to about 250 units per
week.
The company COULD produce more per week -
but we also have to sell and ship them, so 250
sounds like a good number to me.
To be honest, I'm pretty happy they didn't do
more than 100 per week up until now - as I am
flooded with work already and I don't plan to
work myself to death...
I've got to catch up a lot of things right now. I
got tons of emails left to reply, I had to work on
the whole shop and order handling system as it
was not suited for so many orders, I got some
RMAs left (though MOST of them have been
done already), etc.
Aditionally, all the pre-assembled units Askarus,
Link and Linux_SWAT created have now been
used up... so I'm currently also preassembling
the next units.
About 250 left to go, from then on, Global
Components will also do the full assembly.
So yeah, there's a lot of work still left for me to
do, but I'm slowly catching up and should have
most of the work done sometime in June.
Then I'm also prepared for a fullspeed
production.


2. Parts and Cases

As usual, the stuff from China is late.
The new cases should've been finished mid-
March, but as usual, they took a while longer.
Good thing I ordered them early... Fatih told me
that they are already on the way.
So within the next few days, we'll get 5000 more
cases. That should be enough
The new cases will also have a new color. It will
be a dark silver, looking a bit like aluminium.
The new paint is way more scratch resistant and
looks a lot better.
As soon as I got it, I'll take some pictures.
We still got some black cases left, so you will be
able to decide what color you want.
We had some issues with the LCD-Cable
company, but Fatih did a good job and we
already got the next batch of cables now.
Another problem solved.
LCDs are becoming a bit harder to get (they're
out of production), but we're not having too big
issues sourcing them right now, so that's fine as
well.
So all in all, besides that all these things are
eating up our time, I don't see any big problems
right now.


3. email backlogs...

Well, you probably already saw it on other
threads here at the boards: my email backlog is
still pretty long... I got about 700 emails left to
reply, and though I take some time to reply to
them each few days, the queue is only slowly
shrinking.
Each day, I receive about 20 more emails I need
to reply... so yep, this is a MASSIVE amount of
work.
Please don't be mad about that - I'll reply to all
of your mails, but with all the other things I have
to do at the same time right now, I'm not that
fast.
I try to look at the mails when they come in and
try to reply to the most important ones, but
sometimes one of these hides itself in the
massive queue.
Once GC fully assembles the units and I've got
less things to organize, this will get better.


4. Where in the world is...

... no, not Carmen Santiego... but we're looking
for someone else.
We all know: It's simply not possible that
NOTHING goes wrong within Pandora-Land... so
yeah, here is something new.
When buying bigger parts in large quantities (like
LCDs and AC adaptors), you either have to
handle the custom declaration yourself when
you want to pick them up at the airport or get
an agent who will do that for you.
Agents are not that expensive - and unlike me,
they know what they're doing (and doing
custom declaration wrong REALLY can cause
issues).
So I hired the company SoundMoves at Munich
Airport to do that for me.
Sent them the import tax fee right away (5000
EUR), picked up the custom documents and the
goods, and everything was fine.
This was in March.
One week ago, I got an invoice from the
customs about these 5000 EUR. Apparently,
they hadn't been paid by SoundMoves... and
SoundMoves are not able to pay them, so I have
to pay them again.
WTH? SoundMoves bankrupt? It's a big
worldwide operating company... handling
transport for musicians like Madonna and U2...
Weird.
As I wasn't able to contact anyone in the Munich
office, I emailed the main office in London.
And things got even weirder then.
They told me the company in Munich is a totally
different company founded by the same CEO.
He simply used the good name of the company
to open up a new one... he even used their
website for this company... even though the
London office tried to tell him to use a different
name.
Whew, what a bloke. But it gets even better.
The London office told me he also owes them
quite a bit of money.
AND they don't even know where he is - they
asked me to tell them his whereabouts in case I
get hold of him.
They only know that he sometimes visits the
office when no one is there to grab the mail and
he most probably is somewhere in Italy... geeez.
Now most of you probably know that it's nigh
impossible to get money back from a company
that has filed for bankruptcy.
However, the case is a bit different here: They
never had the right to use the 5000 EUR from
me for themselves. It was not THEIR money, it
was money they got simply to forward it to
customs.
So this is fraud - which means: the CEO is
personally liable for that.
My lawyer is already working on it and I'll pay a
visit to the police tomorrow to report him.
Then they'll start a search for him...
In Pandora-Land, there's always something
weird happening.
I'm pretty positive we'll get the money back
from him soon, so this is mostly simply
annoying and eating up some more of my
precious time.

So all in all things are still working fine here
I wish it was less work for me, but I'm working
towards that

GECA soft. hat ein neues Spiel für den WIZ veröffentlicht: Skull.



Es handelt sich um ein feines Jump'n'Run. Lauffähig unter Linux, Windows und dem WIZ.

Homepage: http://www.gecasoft.no.sapo.pt/

http://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=nightvision.fs.000

As quite a few of you asked about upgrading their preorder to get the unit a bit faster, I've finished the submission form to apply for that.

This is only applicable if you ordered the Pandora before October 2011.

The money made from these upgrades will be used to fund more pre-October 2011-Preorder-Units, so this will help everyone still waiting patiently for his / her Pandora to get it a bit faster
It will also help us to cover a bit of the loss that the old PCB production company caused us.

It's up to you to decide how much you want to pay for that. The mininum is 85 EUR (or 101,15 EUR incl. 19% VAT)., though you can also pay more if you want.
The Payment doesn't have to be done before your unit is ready to be dispatched - so there's no risk.


To apply for the upgrade, follow this link

Feel free to ask any questions in this thread

Well, I'd say production is going pretty well.
GC are doing their very best to support us and
get the Pandora running
So far, out of 300 units produced, only a couple
ones didn't bootup. The remaining ones are safe
and sound
We're not yet at full speed, though, but that will
happen sooner or later.
We are having a small issue with the bare PCBs:
The solder mask layer isn't accurate enough to
work the OMAP on all PCBs.
That means, that all PCBs are currently being
checked manually if they can be populated.
This needs some time, but it's way better than
simply populating all PCBs and have a high
failure rate (we had such a company already...).
It this something to worry about?
Not really. It's pretty normal.
Both me and GC talked to other companies
working with the OMAP and checked the
internet:
Doing a production run with the OMAP is not
very easy.
Basically, there are two ways to do it: NSMD
(Non-Solder-Mask-Defined) and SMD (Solder-
Mask-Defined).
The first method could lead to shortcircuits on
the OMAP whereas the second method can lead
to what we are currently experiencing: pads
wiithout solder paste on them.
It's impossible to tell upfront which method
works out properly for you - it depends on the
PCB Manufacturer, the machine used for
population and even the solder paste being
used.
Therefore, this needs to be tested.
As GC knows we want to deliver and can't do a
lot of tests, they're doing these tests while
keeping the production going.
As mentioned, they are currently checking each
PCB if it can be used and will populate it.
They also already ordered single PCBs (the
current ones came in panels of four), about 100
done with SMD and 100 done with NSMD.
This will help to determine which ones work
better and will also be assembled into full
Pandoras
Once this optimization has been done, the
machine could spit out 250 Pandora per day...
though right now I'm happy that 300 have been
finished and more to follow soon.
While it's not as fast as some of you hoped for,
it's still faster than CC ever was - and without
any failures.
So I'm happy here
About the Upgrade process:
I've setup the website for that already, but am
too tired to post further infos and a link right
now (it's 4:11 am here).
So I'll do that tomorrow and then you have the
chance to get your unit faster (only classic
preorders, of course) )
Stay tuned

Sorry for the late newspost - I was totally worn out after the production start on Thursday and Friday so I really needed a weekend to relax.
Had to catch up some sleep as well.

Well, yes, as you've seen in Link's video: It has finally happened. The mass production run has started

Is everything going fast and smooth?
Well, not yet. But that would've been unusual (not only for the Pandora, but also for other devices )

With the first units built, you always go a bit slower as you need to test everything and see if you get any issues on the PCBs that would require the machine to be tweaked.
While assembling the first 40 units, we were also trying to optimize the position of the L and R buttons, so that we don't need to scratch or pad the plastic each time.
This took a while, but with the 30 units Link built today, only one R-Button needed a bit of optimizing, however, most of the L-Buttons were still sitting a bit too high so needed a little cut with the blade.
We'll change this in the machine program, so in the end they'll work as good as the R-Buttons

So far, 180 PCBs have been produced, 80 have been assembled, fully tested and are ready to ship. While this sounds like a lot, the theoretical output of the machine is 250 per day (8 hour shift), but mass productions should start at a slower pace to be sure evrrything works.
Only 3 of those refused to bootup at all, while about 8 have a non-working left nub, so it seems there's some part that needs an optimized placement in the machine program as well.

Everything else was working fine on these PCBs, and the other ones can be fixed.

So with 3 non-booting ones, we are currently at a failure rate of 4%, which is pretty nice for the beginning of a mass production (failure rate goes down the more units you produce).
It should be noted that those 3 were all among the first 15 produced

The new stickers for the battery compartment should arrive tomorrow, all the AC Adaptors should also arrive within this week (scheduled to be in Germany tomorrow), so I'm currently preparing the invoices and eMails for the preorderers.
There's another surprise for you which I'm waiting for... hopefully, it'll be at my place within the next days as well, otherwise, I'll start shipping out Pandoras anyways (it's not mandatory).

Regarding mass production, there is one thing left to be solved:
The OMAP is a real beast to populate. With a pitch of 0,4mm and different tolerances regarding PCB production standards (in this case, the solder mask as well as the metal stencil layer), it takes a bit of work to get everything go smoothly.

Currently, quite a few of the bare PCBs couldn't be used, as some pads didn't have solder paste on after going through the machine.
Instead of just ignoring that issue and populating the PCBs anyways (we've had something like that with a different company already...), GC decided to find a proper solution and are now heavily working on this.
10 panels with bare PCBs have gotten their solder mask tolerances measured, so that a new metal stencil layer can be produced based on these values (to find the absolute middle).
If we're lucky, then this will work out and all PCBs can be populated without any risk. We'll get that stencil layer on Wednesday.
GC also has other solutions ready in case the offsets of the solder mask are too high.
While they won't be running at full speed (so... slower than 250 a day ), they will probably be faster than I can ship them out at the beginning, as I've got so much work to catch up with!

It really kicks ass how helpful GC is and how they successfully try to prevent producing non-working boards and finding solutions fast and quick.
They're totally dedicated to what they're doing, and that's awesome. We're totally on the right way

I'll try to find the time to setup the upgrade-info-page tomorrow and let you know how grab your Pandora a bit faster (only classic preorderers )